Why did everyone watch Top of the Pops?

The terminally uncool "pop" programme from the terminally uncool state TV station, BBC1. A recipe for failure, surely. And yet, everyone watched Top of the Pops. Why was that?

Take a trip back in time to the culturally hegemonic imperial phase of the programme; to a time when it was great act of subversion to play air guitar as you mimed to your hit live on air; to a time when Tony Blackburn was being driven round a lagoon by a Womble in a speedboat.

Let's find out why Top of the Pops was so uncool it went all the way back round and became cool again